5/6/17
The travails of Stephen Colbert related to a controversial joke that he made about Trump reminded me of this Rick Blog post from way back in 2015. It still lays out my values related to creating my own work and viewing the work of others.
Stephen Colbert was an improv student in a workshop that I ran, and briefly an actor in a Second City Touring Company that I directed, when he was just starting out and he was a lot younger. He was the best student and young actor that I ever worked with. Whip smart. A happy and tireless worker. A concerned interest in the world. A confident sense of purpose that went beyond mere personal ambition. A kind and respectful work colleague. A person secure in his skin at a very young age moored by a well-considered progressivism and a liberal Catholicism dedicated to honor in his personal relationships and justice in the world-at-large. Nothing that would surprise anyone who has viewed his good work in his highly successful and celebrated career.
Colbert performed one of the finest and most important comedy sets in history at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. His courageous routine exemplified why the First Amendment exists. He skewered a sitting President of the United States who was executing an ill-advised, immoral and corrupt war while that President sat a few feet away from him. Colbert was condemned and praised in seemingly equal measure. In another time his career might have ended. Of course, and happily, it has flourished.
Now Colbert’s bravery and integrity has led him to the hot seat again. He has made a sexual explicit joke within a rant about Donald Trump. The rant and joke are appropriately tasteless reflections of Trump himself.
Colbert faces business pressures, faux fascist outrage from the right and an FCC investigation. He’ll be fine. He’ll have all of the legal and business advice that he needs, and his career will get even bigger. Colbert is yielding one of the powerful checks and balances against Trump — he sees Trump’s authoritarian ambitions and he’ll have none of it.
I wish Colbert hadn’t apologized to gay people who I am sure were not offended. “I would change a few words that were cruder than they needed to be,” he said. “I just want to say, for the record, life is short. And anyone who expresses their love for another person in their own way is, to me, an American hero.” Colbert may be slightly hurt by his own civility and kindness. His enemies will use his words as a kind of admission of guilt. Being accused of poor taste by vulgarian Trump and his bullying, infinitely disrespectful supporters is a joke itself. Those “crude words” mirrored Trump’s crudity, and succinctly expressed outrage about this illegitimate President who treasonously colluded with Vladimir Putin in a submissive fashion to usurp power and obstruct our democracy. They clearly had no homophobic intent.
I recently told a joke. “6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. The Health Care bill that just passed in the House of Representatives would reportedly take away 24 million Americans health insurance coverage. Trump is winning. Up 24 – 6.”
Some accused me of being insensitive about the Holocaust. One of them had lost several family members in the Holocaust. I said that I was very sorry for her family’s pain, but I did not apologize for the joke. It reflects the violent fascism of Trump and the Republican Party. It speaks to the urgency of our national situation — we are against people with the same values and potential for causing mass suffering as the Nazis. My joke did nothing to minimize or deny the horror of the Holocaust. I recently posted a brief Facebook post that echoed a famous quote of Martin Niemoller, a Protestant pastor who was an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler:
First they came for my affordable health care, then they came for my Medicaid, then they came for my Medicare, then they came for my Social Security, then they came for my worker’s compensation, then they came for my unemployment insurance, then they came for my minimum wage. And when I was sick and homeless they blamed me and came for me. Each time the Democrats argued for “moderation.” Now and forever is the time to be uncompromising and demanding for ALL that decency says we deserve. Let’s start with single payer.
The people who chastised me for my Holocaust reference said, “Each genocide stands alone.” I responded that I was more motivated by another famous saying related to the Holocaust and stated by Elie Wiesel. “Never again.” The Nazis that I am currently focused on exist in the present. The Nazis of the 1930s and 1940s have already been defeated.
I am against political correctness, but I strongly believe in high responsibility in our exercise of free speech. Trump’s mockery of a disabled reporter was appalling, to cite one example of his consistently offensive behavior in the 2016 campaign. The shocking and impolite use of language by the artists mentioned in my 2015 post below is the opposite. I’m sorry that I didn’t include Mel Brooks in that post. Blazing Saddles is a wonderful example of what I mean. Brooks’ script used the n word, laughed at flamboyant gay behavior, punched old ladies in the face and abused animals. Yet its ultimate effect was to champion all those groups and others, and skewer the people and ideas that oppress them.
There are no limits regarding taste in comedy. Lenny Bruce, the father of profane humor in mainstream clubs, wrote How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. BUT Lenny Bruce was a serious person—an esteemed and remembered moralist and a cultural advocate for free speech—a kind of patriot. He wasn’t a leering emcee in a titty club.
Mark Twain used the n-word freely in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The book is banned by many school districts and libraries BUT Huckleberry Finn is one of the great works of literature in world history with great insight about the issue of race as a fundamental aspect of the American character. He wasn’t a frat boy making bigoted jokes to amuse his dad at a country club.
Richard Pryor used the n-word, all the profanity of Lenny Bruce and graphic and disturbing imagery including a pantomime and monologue depiction of his flesh being on fire as a result of an accident while using drugs. He was brought up in a Peoria whorehouse by his grandmother, a hard woman from the toughest streets. His voice as a comedian reflected that background BUT also included a deep and natural vulnerability. Pryor’s work had great cultural significance. He helped usher in a greater acceptance of uncompromised African-American culture by white America by speaking with defiant pride and no apology. His work was a cry of dignity for an oppressed people beginning to come into their own. Beyond that his work addressed humanity as a whole. He made one beautiful set piece after another about freedom, resilience, injustice and intelligence among other great themes. He was not a bad rapper dropping n-bombs and f-bombs while using ugly imagery to advocate violence.
There are no limits of taste in comedy. Profanity is allowed. Politically incorrect observations are allowed. Disgusting images depicting physical pain and gross bodily functions are allowed. As in all art, the unvarnished truth portrayed with brutal honesty is allowed and required. Art in general, and particularly comedy is not only about creating pleasing aesthetic images. Comedy at its best is about transforming consciousness—an expansion of the comedian’s and his audience’s hearts and minds. Truth is beauty and beauty can be found by thoroughly understanding and transcending ugliness. The comedian’s tough words and imagery must therefore come from a perspective of moral and compassionate intelligence. It must never be used to denigrate the weak. It must, as Mark Twain wrote show the comedian’s “scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture.” Good comedy attacks the people, ideas and institutions that keep us down and suggests what freedom looks like. And that’s pretty.
John Cleese said that satire provokes some people to think and angers the people that it confuses. And so it will always be. There are no limits to taste in comedy BUT it must never be mean or stupid. The mean and stupid and the merely confused sometimes accuse the most highly moral and humanist comedians of being tasteless and lacking all morality. It’s an interesting dynamic to think about the Thursday before Easter. Jesus had many good lines about the Pharisees and the Romans that many thought were in bad taste at the time.
Copyright 2015 Richard Thomas
Richard Thomas Writing Blog 